Che Guevara – Not a Saint, Not a Butcher

Che Guevara: Not a Saint, Not a Butcher
March 16, 2015
Martín Guevara*

HAVANA TIMES — Today, I had something of a domestic dispute with an
on-line acquaintance who asked me what I thought about my uncle Ernesto
“Che” Guevara having been a “butcher.” I tackled the issue more or less
saying that, generally speaking, we had to recognize he had been an
exceptional person, but that he was ultimately a human being and not the
triumphal statue he was turned into.

Neither Saint nor Butcher

The first to suffer as a result of this kind of thinking is the person
we’ve turned into a myth. Doing this completely trivializes the effort
and the sacrifices that person made in order to acquire each of their
supposed virtues.

Ernesto was many things before becoming the man who headed down the road
of the “guerrilla,” a path he was persuaded to follow by the ambition
and insensitivity of the world’s powerful and their refusal to
distribute the planet’s wealth in a more equitable, fraternal and even
democratic fashion.

He was a great dreamer and romantic, a lone-wolf, a tireless traveler,
an intellectual, a connoisseur of high French, Spanish and Latin
American poetry, a refined writer, a doctor who, despite never having
practiced officially, healed more people in the jungles, leper colonies
and places in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra he spent time in than most
professional doctors throughout their lives.

He was a person who stood out among politicians owing to what I consider
to be his most outstanding feature: he practiced what he preached. In
general terms, I do not agree with any of his ideas. I am not a
communist. I hate it when others meddle in my private affairs. The
freedom of the State, like that of anyone and anything, ends where my
rights begin.

I condemn any kind of interference in the life of individuals on behalf
of the interests of the masses, and I am totally opposed to any kind of
violence – my uncle’s and, of course, that of his enemies (and we can
agree that, since 1967, more people have died as a result of political
violence, wars, bombings, armed combat, upheavals, torture and other
tragedies than Che ever killed in combat or executed). I do not agree
with any of those ideas. I do, however, think our times are poorer for
lack of someone who does what they say, think as they act and openly
tell us about what they do: someone who practices what they preach, in
short.

Ernesto was many things before becoming the man who headed down the road
of the “guerrilla,” a path he was persuaded to follow by the ambition
and insensitivity of the world’s powerful and their refusal to
distribute the planet’s wealth in a more equitable, fraternal and even
democratic fashion.
He was a champion of volunteer work and he was the first to roll up his
sleeves every Sunday. Fidel couldn’t stand that, because it made him
look bad. Fidel would do volunteer work for the picture opportunity. He
wasn’t willing to spend four hours of a Sunday sweating buckets. He only
did that once or twice after Che’s death, in 1970, when the
10-million-ton sugar harvest failed miserably, but he only did that
because he saw his enterprise in danger and was afraid to be held
directly responsible for that catastrophic, hard-headed enterprise.

Other government officials resented Che because of that, for mocking
them and rubbing their lack of scruples in their faces, and because he
was straight as an arrow and not very fond of opportunists.

He stuck his neck out for what he thought was right and died next to his
soldiers. He traveled without bodyguards. He would hop on trains and
visit places like Hiroshima, or Montevideo, Uruguay, when I assume he
missed the River Plate, a thick juicy steak, a mate and a park-bench
chat with someone in the parlance of his youth. As a government
minister, he would often drive places on his own.

Fidel travels with five hundred bodyguards. He called a liver expert
from the Gregorio Marañon hospital in Spain over to avoid dying, razing
all of the propaganda about the superiority of Cuban medicine to the
ground. He has always done what it takes to remain at the top and, of
course, so as to stay alive!

Ernesto took after his mother Celia in that he finished what he started,
with the romantic and transgressive spirit of his father Ernesto. He
told the truth, even when it was hard to do. He is the only politician
ever to stand before the United Nations to say something like:

“We have executed people, we are executing people and we will continue
to execute people.” This is no doubt a dreadful statement, but I do miss
these sincere and needed speeches that no other leader (not even Fidel
Castro) has since pronounced, affirming things such as:

“We imprison, we forbid, we kill, we torture, we bomb, we liquidate, we
develop weapons of mass destruction, we create famine, misery, pain and
fear, and we will continue to do so.”

That was his major political difference with Fidel Castro, who, in the
course of his life, has been able to convince the sheep to peacefully
fall asleep in a den of wolves.

Fidel would gather people up, lie right and left, and deceive the
masses, officials, presidents, and businesspeople to suit his individual
interests.

“We are not communists and will never be communists,” he used to say.

Then again, looking back on this, that may well have been one of the few
truths he ever pronounced: he was never even the shadow of a true communist.

Che, on the other hand, would tell his soldiers this: “most of us will
probably not make it out of here alive. Whoever wants to leave, leave
now. This is a man’s task.” His battalions started out with a hundred
men and ended with ten.

Fidel started with a hundred and ended with a million men. However, he
let those million sink on the Titanic, never on Noa’s Ark.

Che died next to his soldiers. Yes, he was certainly tough, and his
enemies claim he was heartless. But he was also a man of humanitarian
values who took the side of those who had no hope back then, or in the
world in general.

The government officials who extolled him after his death had secretly
loathed him when he was still alive, but the humble, working people of
Cuba loved him sincerely. They weren’t moved by the fear towards an
all-powerful and devouring god, as they were when it came to Fidel. I
saw genuine affection in the faces of the very humble people who knew
him and spoke to me about him.

I say the same thing to those who see only the shining face of the
impeccable revolutionary who had nothing but virtues, the image Fidel
promoted in Cuba to suit his interests, after abandoning him when Che
needed him most, that it is also true he was in charge of the executions
conducted at Havana’s La Cabaña fortress, a far from happy episode in
the history of the Cuban “de-evolution.”

Every coin has two faces. We are all a mix of different values. Ernesto
took the good and the far-from-good to their extremes.

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